of the ladies doomed to disappointment, although many an anxious hour still remained to be passed before they found themselves safe under the British flag.

The ladies were most kindly received in their new abode [continues Captain Orr's narrative], clothes were provided for them, and all their wants, as far as possible, attended to. The British, already masters of the palace and of the principal buildings in the city, were driving the enemy from its outskirts, a portion of which was still held by the Moulvie. This monster had long suspected Wajid Ali, and his object was to seize him, as he had already seized Shurf-o-dowlah, the minister under the rebel administration. Communications with the British camp, though often interrupted, were still kept up by Wajid Ali, who was plunged into the greatest anxiety, regarding the safety of the ladies and of his own large family.

On the 18th March the Moulvie discovered the abode of Wajid Ali, who, through his own spies, was well aware of the intentions of his enemy. The position of the ladies was now most critical, for, although the British were masters of the principal portion of the city, yet the Moulvie, with a considerable force, still held a position in the suburbs. On the night preceding, Wajid Ali wrote to Captain Orr's brother, pointing out the extreme danger in which they were all placed, and earnestly begging for assistance. This letter was

shown to Sir J. Outram, who communicated on the subject with General Macgregor, then, most providentially, with the Ghoorka or Nepaulese troops, not far from Wajid Ali's residence. The danger was imminent A few hours' delay would have been the loss of all their lives. Without British aid there was no means of escape. Mrs. Orr wrote another most pressing letterbut as the messenger was going out with it, he met a party of Ghoorkas, under the command of two British officers, Captains Macneile and Bogle, and conducted them to the house. The Moulvie was already moving from another quarter, in the same direction. One hour's delay might have been fatal. The ladies were hastily put into a palanqueen, and, as no bearers were to be had, the servants of the officers and some of the Ghoorkas shouldered the conveyance. The Char Bagh was reached and crossed. General Macgregor's camp came in sight. On-on swiftly was the palanqueen borne. The friendly camp was at length gained, and the ladies were safe. The next day they were escorted to General Outram's camp, and Mrs. Orr had the inexpressible delight of once more clasping her daughter in her arms.1

It is also satisfactory to know that Captains Macneill and Bogle succeeded in escorting the larg household of Wajid Ali in safety t the Ghoorka lines, and that Waji Ali was amply recompensed for hi kindness to the captives.

THEBY

HE legal ascendency and State endowment of the Episcopal Church in Ireland is undoubtedly one of the main roots of popular discontent. That Church consists, for the most part, of people of British descent, whose ancestors followed at different times in the train of conquest, settling on confiscated lands, and they now inherit nine tenths of the soil. Nearly the whole of the nobility and gentry are State Churchmen, and, as a natural consequence, they enjoy almost a monopoly of the government of the country-as peers of Parliament, members of the House of Commons, lieutenants of counties, deputy-lieutenants, magistrates, grand-jurors, county officials, heads and chief functionaries of public departments, &c. In a word, the members of this Church, forming 11 per cent. of the total population, are the ruling class. They impose the taxes, and they administer justice to a subjugated race, alien in blood and reEgion, and still considered so hostile to their rulers that they cannot safely be admitted to a position of religious equality, nor even to any fixity in the soil, although it is their industry that produces the rental on which a numerous aristocracy lives in splendour in England, France, or Germany. These considerations will partly account for the fact that the land system and the Church Establishment are the twin roots of disaffection.

The main evil of the land system in the present day is not that the tenants are rack rented. Generally speaking, the rents on the large estates particularly are not exorbitant, considering the competition for land in a country where the mass of the people have no means of subsistence but agricultural industry. The land is valued by the proprietor or his agent, who puts

on such an amount per acre as will leave a margin for a hard-working man to support himself and his family. He can never hope to do much more, and he has an abiding conviction that if the margin between the amount of rent and produce did enable him to do more, it would be very soon curtailed, so that he gives up the attempt and contents himself with struggling on from year to year, being, in nine cases out of ten, a mere tenant at will. He firmly believes that, in self-defence, his farm, his house, his family, should all bear evidence to the landlord, the agent, the bailiff, and the neighbours, that he is barely able to live, and has great difficulty in making the two ends meet when he gathers in his harvest. Hence, he dares not improve his farm, or keep his house neat, or dress his wife and children respectably, because he knows there are many evil eyes upon him, sharp to detect any incipient signs of prosperity. The effect of this hostile and suspicious surveillance on the civilisation and improvement of the country may be easily imagined.

But this is not all, nor the worst part of the Irish land system. The worst of it is the degrading bondage to which it subjects the occupiers of the soil. For an illustration of the despotism under which he suffers, we need not take the case of any small proprietor-of an attorney, for instance, who has purchased a property in the Landed Estates Court, paying for it mainly, perhaps, by his bill of costs;trader or merchant who has invested his savings in land, not merely that he may get a high percentage for his capital, but that he may be able to rank among the gentry of the country, and share with them the privileges of a domi

or a

nant class. Let us take the case of a very large estate, the property of a great English peer, which his family have enjoyed for many generations, and who is generally considered one of the best landlords in Ireland. It is true he is an absentee, having also large estates in his own country. But his Irish agent is generally a near relative, who occupies a fine mansion surrounded by venerable woods, rich preserves, and model farms in the midst of the estate. Not long ago the noble earl was entertained at a public dinner by his Irish tenantry. The chairman, in proposing his health, spoke of him as one of the very best of Irish landlords, and said that he never knew a tenant on the estate to be evicted if he paid his rent 'and acted judiciously.' The landlord, in responding, said that this was true not only of him but of his father before him, at the same time laying stress on the word 'judiciously.' There must have been some qualification of this kind; for it was notorious that many tenants had been evicted, and that the population had been very much thinned throughout the estate, and that this process of thinning or weeding had been going on steadily for a long time. It was also notorious that no leases had been given on the estate for many years. The small Protestant gentry, who had formed a rather numerous middle class in past times, were allowed, when their old leases expired, to continue in possession as tenants at will— the buildings which their ancestors had erected, and the trees which they had planted, becoming the property of the landlord. Public attention was directed two or three years ago to the position of these gentlemen from the fact that at the quarter sessions held in a town on the estate, the business was stopped at the outset, and the court had to be adjourned, because one of the attorneys objected to the grand

jury as disqualified, being mere tenants at will.

Several addresses of the most flattering character were presented to the landlord on the occasion of his late visit. But among all the tenants who signed those addresses, and who made eulogistic speeches at the entertainments, perhaps not one was independent of the object of their laudation. Grand jurors, magistrates, clergymen, all were beholden for a house and home, and land and livelihood, to the favour of this wealthy English peer! It is perfectly true that neither he nor his father ever turned out a tenant who paid his rent and acted 'judiciously.' It is also true that the rents are moderate. But 'judiciously' is a comprehensive word and full of meaning. It means that the tenant, whatever may be his politics, must always vote for the landlord or his nominee. If under any pressure he should dare to vote against him, he knows well the consequences. He knows also that he must be very guarded in his talk about political matters, for if he gave utterance to a heterodox opinion, or a rash word, some neighbour would hear it; it would be repeated with exaggeration to the bailiff, the bailiff would convey it with more exaggeration to the under agent, the under agent would convey it with still greater exagge ration to the head agent, and from that moment his doom was sealed. No more favours at the office, no more timber or slates for building, no more tiles for draining, no more time for bringing in the rent; arrears suddenly called in, a distress issued-a notice to quit-eviction. A few examples of this kind would be sufficient to enslave the souls of the tenants of a whole district. He must be as careful about meddling with game as with politics. The privileged animals which are preserved for the enjoyment of the landlord and his visitors may feed

on the tenants' crops ad libitum, and he must not venture to molest the trespassers. Suppose you killed a hare,' the writer of this paper said to one of the farmers on the estate in question, 'what would be the consequence ?' 'The consequence!' he exclaimed; 'why, the agent would pull down the house over my head, and I should be driven out of my farm of forty acres, which I hold at a moderate

rent.'

The tenants, however, might endure the restrictions imposed upon them in connection with politics and game; but there are rules and regulations' of the most minute kind connected with the management of their farms which are most vexatious and oppressive. They are designed to enforce the consolidation of small farms into large ones, and to get the land gradually into the hands of a few men of capital. In order to carry out this object, the class of small farmers who rely mainly on the industry of their families, are strictly forbidden to sell a load of hay or straw even to a neighbouring farmer on the same estate. One man, from the nature of the soil and various other circumstances, may have a large proportion of his farm under grain crops or meadows; another may have more live stock than he has food for on his own holding. These two neighbours might help one another; but the tenant with deficient stock cannot sell his surplus hay, or let his surplus grass. If he does, the spies who are always about him convey the information to the office,' and he receives notice to quit. He may perhaps avert the calamity by propitiating the bailiff, and securing his silence; or secret arrangements may be made by which the rules are evaded. For example, it is a common practice to effect a sham sale of stock in this way. One farmer will put a certain number

VOL. LXXVII.-NO. CCCCLVIII.

of sheep on his neighbour's land, at a certain nominal price, for which a promissory note is given, payable in two or three months as the case may be. At the end of that time the sheep are ostensibly bought back by the real owner, paying merely the customary price of the grazing. The demoralising effect of this arbitrary interference with the management of the land, enforced as it is by the employment of spies and informers, and entailing, as it does, concealment, deception, duplicity, bribery, and slavish fear of discovery, is too obvious to need remark. We can well understand how honest minds writhe under such bondage, and how the sons of such farmers, when they go to America and breathe its free atmosphere, curse bitterly the agrarian tyranny which enslaves their fathers, and are ready to rush into any mad scheme by which that tyranny could be broken for ever.

The landlord may know little or nothing of the working of the system. He seldom sees his tenants; some never see them except on public occasions when they come once or twice a year and receive ovations, accompanied by sycophantic addresses, the illumination of small towns, and the burning of tar barrels. It is enough for them that the rental is kept up, the game preserved, and the votes of the tenants secured. Nor does the head agent trouble himself much about details. His duties as a magistrate and grand juror, his attendance at his club, his visits to the metropolis, sports of the field, the hospitalities of the county, occupy a great deal of his time and attention; so that the real management of the estate rests with his deputy. This powerful personage probably began life as a junior clerk in the office, or came over from England as a page in the train of the noble landlord. In the course of years, he has become sub-agent. He is ac

T

quainted with the circumstances of all the tenants on the estate, and his confidential position enables him to give information on every point that may arise for the consideration of his chief. It is well understood that no petitioner has any chance of a 'favour' from the agent who does not first secure the goodwill of his deputy. To seek for anything without the interposition of this mediator would be fatal to himself and his family. We have used the word 'petitioner' because it is the one which best expresses the abject and slavish spirit in which tenants at will-even those who are large farmers-approach the office, and solicit the consideration of the subagent. Without being present in disguise on rent days among the crowd of tenants in the office of a great absentee landlord, it would be impossible to conceive the degradation to which the landlord power reduces that portion of the Queen's subjects on which the wealth of Ireland mainly depends, or the insolence which they endure from the agent's underlings, except the few who have found means of winning their favour and respect. Manly independence, noble self-reliance, the virtues of free men-the qualities the absence of which public men so often lament in the Irish character-are utterly impossible under the present land system. The law makes the landlord and his agents despots, under whom it is impossible to exist without the most degrading servility.

The officials of a large estate must be men of severe integrity indeed, if they can resist the temptations to which they are exposed. Without neglecting the landlord's interests, they have it in their power to do much for a 'deserving tenant;' and it will go hard with a strong farmer' if his prudence is not able to devise some means by which the sub-agent, the chief clerk, the head bailiff, and their families, shall be

brought to the conviction that he is one of the most deserving tenants on the estate, and the fittest to get any small farm that may become vacant in his neighbourhood. There is, however, very little corruption of a tangible kind prevailing now in connection with the management of Irish estates, compared with what there was in the last generation. Many pages might be written, describing the tribute paid to a subagent with whose case the writer was acquainted. Many a petty prince in the olden time would have been proud of such a revenue in kind. There was scarcely a strong farmer throughout a large tract of country who was not gratuitously rearing for him a thorough-bred horse, which was sent home in the finest condition when old enough for the market. Fat heifers and fat sheep were daily dropping into his extensive farmyards. Loads of corn, bags of flour, firkins of butter, hampers of fowl, produce of all kinds poured in to this lucky man from every point of the compass. To find accommodation for all these contributions, his barns, stables, and yards were enlarged and spread out till they looked like a village. It was impossible to send all these things to market quickly enough to prevent their attracting attention, and calling forth invidious remarks, which might perhaps reach the ear of the absentee lord of the soil. To guard against any consequence of that kind, the sub-agent had purchased a farm on another estate, where he could enjoy his wealth independently, if the supplies were stopped, and the worst came to the worst. Scandal added another touch to this picture. It was rumoured that many a fair suppliant was compelled, by the necessities of a bankrupt's family, to plead in the closet of this little potentate that the bailiff might be taken out of the house, and that the last few cows might not be sold for arrears